A quick start for Obama on first day

President Barack Obama got off to a quick start in his first full day in office, mixing ceremonial duties with his first official forays into domestic and foreign policy.

Obama attended a prayer service at the National Cathedral, greeted 200 members of the public in a White House receiving line and swore in his top aides. But he also convened his senior national security and economic teams for separate afternoon meetings after spending part of the morning on the phone with four Mideast leaders discussing the Gaza conflict.

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Perhaps most significantly, Obama underscored that a new administration had taken over the capital with a series of executive orders aimed at creating the open government he promised on the campaign trail.

Obama said the moves were aimed at helping to “restore that faith in government without which we cannot deliver the changes we were sent here to make,” drawing a barely veiled contrast between himself and a predecessor who was accused by critics of excessive secrecy and legal abuses.

In the executive orders and memoranda he signed Wednesday afternoon, Obama announced that no lobbyist will be allowed to take a White House job in an area where they lobbied. Nor would former lobbyists who come to work for him be allowed to lobby the administration after leaving government service.

He banned gifts from lobbyists to administration officials. And he said he’d require all those, not just lobbyists, who serve him to commit in writing to refrain from influencing colleagues for two years. The moves represent “a clean break from business as usual,” Obama said.

Obama’s announcement fulfills a campaign pledge – but one that he watered down significantly over the course of his presidential campaign.

Initially, the new president pledged that lobbyists would not be allowed to work in his administration.

He eventually tweaked his stump speech to promise that lobbyists wouldn’t “run” his White House.

Also, in a nod toward the difficult economic times many in the country are facing, Obama said his senior White House staff would be subject to a pay freeze. Aides said the freeze would kick in for senior staff making $100,000 or more.

The new president also said Freedom of Information act requests would be more routinely approved by his administration.

“For a long time now, there's been too much secrecy in this city,” Obama said. “The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over.”